The Great Australian Boredom

Australia is not a good cricket team. Yes, they have won the last three World Cups and currently lead the Test championship, and always have since the table was set up. But, much like watching Roger Federer win day in and day out, and with much of his consistency and precision, Australia serve up something more than their unquestioned skill: boredom. And that’s just not cricket.

Ashis Nandy, a political scientist extraordinaire, argues in his wonderful book, “The Tao of Cricket,” that cricket is a thoroughly un-modern game, which derives most of its entertainment value from its unpredictability. He detects in the game a pagan undercurrent that depends more on matters of chance and play, not necessarily strategy or “consolidation.”

On the field, for example, human control fades in the wake of matters of the gods: the nature of a pitch; overcast conditions; crowd behavior; injuries, etc. This is all to the good, Nandy believes, since it harks back to a more primitive day when overbearing coaches and laptops did not professionalize the game and scrub it clean. Indeed, Federers shouldn’t exist in cricket, since much of his winning ways come from an ability to hit in the same shot in the same spot in similar conditions, over and over.

Of course, Nandy, wary of post-colonial Indian modernization, has his own political agenda, but watching Australia play, it’s hard to disagree with him. In the last three matches, they have gone about their cricket in an almost unbearably staid fashion: consolidate slowly after losing wickets, always nudging singles here and there, until a final onslaught that includes a few successive boundaries (usually ones without substantial risk). It’s a fine recipe, and one that their bowlers replicate with metronome monotony. But really, couldn’t they liven things up a bit?

In fact, even though the Indian press and most of India’s fans drive themselves into a throat-hurting fury when the cricket team fails, I would argue that this inconsistency is also precisely why it can be so much fun to be an Indian fan. Always capable of amazing flashes of brilliance, the Indian team does as it can, and that does not always depend on individual ability. It’s as if every day, an Indian player goes out on the field and hopes that the gods will bless him; if it does, it will be his day — and what a day it will be! — if not, it’s just another defeat.

No one ever knows which India will show up, but because we know the extent of the team’s potential, we have to watch and, of course, pray. Wouldn’t that be better than Australia’s sterilized strategies?

~ by duckingbeamers on October 6, 2007.